Electronic documents (i.e., eDocuments) provide organizations with the ability to generate, maintain, and submit business-related correspondence such as tax forms, invoices, purchase requests, orders, and the like. For example, eDocuments are often used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) communications. There is no single communication sequence for submitting an electronic document. Rather, each distinct document process involves its own unique sequence of steps. Furthermore, each country (or jurisdiction) often requires its own technical requirements for the process which can vary significantly from country-to-country. Accordingly, the amount of time and effort involved in complying with document submissions has increased significantly.
Traditional eDocument services are designed on a per-country basis. In other words, the steps of a document generation and exchange process are hard-coded within the software and are not capable of access or modification. This can be beneficial because it ensures that the document generation and submission process is followed correctly. However, when an organization conducts business globally or in multiple countries, they must use separately designed software services for each jurisdiction based on the different compliance requirements. This often requires the organization (or a third party) to develop each of the different software services from scratch. This can be time consuming and can also be difficult to keep up-to-date given that jurisdictional processes are always evolving. Accordingly, what is needed is a more efficient mechanism for developing compliance service software across different jurisdictions.
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